Neuroscience_in_the_News

Neuroscience in the News Dementia happens to be one of the major disorders that effect elderly people and the loved ones closest to them. The memory lapses, personality changes and impaired reasoning associated with dementia are a few reasons why this degenerative disease continues to be researched. With research comes reporting, and many times the report in which the research is delivered is easily filled with misguiding propaganda from the media. In the case of a recent article posted in the Science Daily by Wiley-Blackwell reports on how adult ADHD significantly increases the risk of a common form of dementia. This article differs from the original scientific journal in the European Journal of Neurology by A. Golimstok et al. in a few ways. Both articles report that dementia with Lewy body’s and ADHD contain hypodopaminergic and noradrenergic substrates which both play a role in developing both these diseases (Wiley 2011). Therefore assuming (and then testing) that adult ADHD could be a precursor for dementia. This hypothesis was tested by researchers in Argentina who conducted a study on patients with two different forms of dementia and a group of healthy patients. These groups were then analyzed to determine which of the patients with dementia had been previously diagnosed with adult ADHD. The results of this study show that 47.8 percent of DLB cases had preceding ADHD symptoms, 15.2 percent of them had Alzheimer’s disease, and 15.1 percent in the control group (Golmistok 2010). The conclusion of this study is that there is a significant risk of DLB in patients with adult ADHD. It was determined that both disorders are pathophysiologically related, but there is no clear reason for the connection, and will call for further investigation (Golmistok 2010). This paper will further analyze how empirical research results are changed through the delivery by the media. In today’s society with the easy access to the Internet claims made by uninformed sources can be read and believed as true. Blog sites, new reports, and newspapers are merely hear say reports that can be altered in many different ways to get the public to believe different stories. Starting at the basis of both articles, the title of each sets a tone for the overall message to be conveyed. The title of the news report in the Scientific Daily states a claim that adult “ADHD significantly increases the risk of a common form of dementia”. At first glance the reader would assume that there has been a groundbreaking discovery on the cause of dementia, when in all actuality this was based on one particular study that essentially concluded more research needed to be done on the topic. There are a few more claims made by the scientific publication that are different from the public release of information. One point made by the Science Daily was that patients with adult ADHD are 3 times more likely to develop dementia. In actuality the European Journal of Neurology reports that there is a higher risk but more research is needed before this statement can officially be valid. Since the scientific journal requires much more explanation, the writing style is very descriptive compared to the Science Daily. The disorders and detail of the experiment are fully described in order to allow complete understanding of the report. This obvious change shows how easy it is for stories and reports to be altered and propaganda to be spread. In the scientific world this is especially important to be mindful of because most people look to reports like these for facts. If the situation arises where the public acquires misinformation, there would be numerous amounts of individuals believing false information that they trusted to be true. The popular assumption made by the primary research article is that there is a correlation between people who have been diagnosed with dementia and those of them who had been diagnosed with adult ADHD previously in their lives. This report is very similar to the research reported in the scientific journal, and even though the accuracy is close the essential reason for the article is to be available and understood by the general public. The attitude and language of this article conveys the question at hand from a scientific standpoint. Words that might not be recognizable to the everyday world are used and fully explained, where as in the article posted by the Scientific Daily the language was kept simple and colloquial. This technique is usually done all the time for the simple fact that people who might not be familiar with the scientific language are given the chance to become informed as well. The popularization of the original research contains the hope of concluding what the cause of dementia might be. The article uses a quote from Dr. Golimstok which states “We believe that our study is the first of its kind to examine the clinical association between adult ADHD symptoms and DLB and that it has established a clear link between the two conditions". In this statement Dr. Golimstok confidently transmits the idea that him and his team have identified a key finding in the research. It was noticed that there wasn’t any speculation or fears conveyed in the more popularized article. The reason for this is because both articles are scientific publications. The lack of speculation in Scientific Daily is a good quality of the article since it would be looked at as fact containing literature. Speculation and fear have no place in any reports based on and truthfully made from original research documents. There are some claims from European Journal of Neurology like limitations of experimental setup that have been left out of the news article. Firstly, it is explained in ENJ that patients with dementia who were not able to make certain decisions had personal decision makers, which were family members that were allowed to make choices regarding the patient’s best interest. Secondly, it was omitted that the course of the study ran from year 2000 through 2005. The hospital that the study was conducted was also left out of the second report of these findings. It could be assumed that the reason for all of these omissions could be because of the required length of the news article or because it could have been deemed unnecessary. These two particular documents did not contain images that justified any of the claims made. Images and their presentation can enhance or distort the research presented in the scientific publication and/or in the news story in many ways. The goal of scientific journals is to explain its findings, and images help make the connection between different concepts. The enhancement of research would come from images that are clear and contain captions explaining how they relate to the research. This allows the reader to further understand the claim by visually seeing exactly what the literature is explaining. A vast amount of numbers and words can make anyone confused and unsure, so the image acts as a reinforcement of understanding. Distortion of the presented research can be from images that appear for the sake of visual reason. Images that have no purpose can confuse a reader more than help because they begin to try to make connections between the report and the picture, which in all actuality has no relation to the information needing to be expressed. Vague captions can distort the article in that readers expect more of a explanation of what they are looking at. In the same breath images that contain wordy captions set up room for more confusion. News articles are the sources that would most likely contain images that lack much explanation since the final message is what most readers are interested in, in comparison to how the message came about. All in all the analysis of how research is turned into popular news concludes that the transmission of information from one source to another can hurt the credibility of the original researchers. Whether or not the information is altered to enhance the findings or omit certain information it is not a truthful expression of the intended research. The article I chose was one that could have been read and reported with the confidence of credibility, but it was still slightly flawed. When dealing with science, or any thing that can alter the beliefs of someone multiple sources should always be analyzed that way there is no lost information and comparisons can be made. * A.Golimstok, J. I. Rojas, M. Romano, M. C. Zurru, D. Doctorovich, E. Cristiano. Previous adult attention-deficit and hyperactivity disorder symptoms and risk of dementia with Lewy bodies: a case-control study. European Journal of Neurology, 2011; 18 (1): 78 DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-1331.2010.03064.x * Wiley - Blackwell (2011, February 6). Adult ADHD significantly increases risk of common form of dementia, study finds. ScienceDaily